


The Spirit Of Christmas

by rae_sann



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas, Family, Food, Friendship, Hot Chocolate, Love, Photography, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27877510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rae_sann/pseuds/rae_sann
Summary: Christmas special! Hohoho! It’s Christmas day and the paladins are shocked to find out that the Alteans have never celebrated anything of the sort before. Thankfully, the squad is about to bring them a little joy.Cue Hunk’s awesome food, friendly banter from Keith and Lance, Shiro being a Space Dad™, some cute Pidge and Rover bonding time, our good boy Kosmo, confused yet happy Alteans, and lots more!
Kudos: 4





	The Spirit Of Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Heya, everyone! Just wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who took the time to read my first fic, which was published not long ago. (It’s a Klance fic btw, and it’s called Campfires just in case y’all wanna check it out!) You might also notice a few characters (e.g. Rover) who are already dead in the original series, but I decided to add them into the story. Anyway, I won’t keep you waiting longer! Please enjoy and do drop a kudos or leave a comment if you enjoyed the fic, it would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> -Rae

“Jingle bells, Zarkon smells, Ke-ith go away~”

According to the Earth clock Pidge had programmed and placed in the lounge, it was the week leading up to Christmas. In honour of it, Lance sat casually on the sofa in the lounge, cajoling the carol at the top of his lungs, a smug grin on his face. 

“Shut up, Lance.” Keith, who was seated not far from the blue paladin said, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he petted Kosmo.

“Lance’s hot,” Hunk added, purposely ignoring Keith as he too joined in,  
“Haggar’s not,” Pidge smirked, holding back a laugh,

“Voltron all the way, HEY!” Shiro chimed in, and the 4 of them sang the last line together. Once the carol was finished, the 5 paladins burst out into laughter, and even Keith was not able to hold back an amused snicker.

“What’re you all singing, paladins?” looking up from where they were seated, they realised that Allura and Coran had entered the room.

“Oh hello, Princess, Coran,” greeted Shiro, waving a hand. “Just some Christmas carols.”

Upon hearing the foreign word, Allura and Coran lifted their eyebrows in unison.  
“Chris-what?” both of them asked at the same time, looking at the paladins as if they had all sprouted 3 heads each. 

“Aww man, you guys haven’t even heard of Christmas? I’m telling you, that there is some tragic shit.” Pidge said, shaking their head in pity. “Christmas, it’s the best time of the year! Or deca-phoeb, in space terms.”

“Yeah!” added Hunk, nodding in agreement to their statement. “It’s when everyone comes together, family and friends, and all have fun together. They have these things called Christmas trees too, where everyone decorates them in colourful ornaments and lights and stuff, and--”

“And, we all have the snowball fights. Man, those were the best! My sisters Veronica and Rachel, and my brothers Luis and Marco and I would always go out into the snow, and start snowball battles, no matter how cold or windy it was outside!” Lance cut across Hunk, too excited to add his part to the conversation to wait for Hunk to finish talking. As soon as he had blurted out the first part, however, his face turned forlorn, and he sighed, a faraway look in his brown eyes. “Oh yeah...I keep forgetting we’re in space now. I really miss those times.”

Hunk put a sympathetic arm around Lance. “Hey, it’s alright. You still have us, right?” suddenly, it looked as if something clicked in the yellow paladin’s mind. Breaking out into a wide grin, he suggested, “Hey! Why don’t we celebrate Christmas in the castle? We can invite Krolia and Pidge’s dad, and maybe we could even get the blades and Romelle to come over!”

Lance immediately brightened as soon as the words came out from Hunk’s mouth. Wrapping his best friend in a tight hug, Lance’s signature smile crept back onto his features, and he looked to the two Alteans with hopeful eyes.

“Yes, yes! Please Coran, Allura, can we?” he asked.

“Yeah, Hunk’s idea sounds very fun, actually,” Pidge nodded, joining in.

The moustached-man looked to Allura.

“Well, seeing as Galra activity has been sparse lately, I don’t see why not,” he said, “That is, of course, if the Princess is on board with it.”

Everyone turned to Allura, in suspense for her answer. After a while, she beamed brightly and announced, “I’m in, let’s do this! Well then, when will the festivities be taking place?”

Everyone cheered loudly at her answer. Lance made a whoop of joy, and Keith did a small fist pump.

“In about 1 quintant,” Shiro replied Allura with a grin as everyone got up from the couch and headed their separate ways, starting to prepare for the occasion. “It’ll be fun, Princess, just you wait and see!”

_________________________________________________________________

“Wow, this place looks great! Well done, everyone,” Shiro stepped into the room, exclaiming in amazement as he gazed around the room in wonder.

It was officially Christmas day, and the lounge had been completely transformed since last week. The paladins had been working extremely hard to decorate the place. Their trip to the space mall days ago had certainly come in handy.

A giant forest-green wreath hung right in the middle of the lounge. Stockings with the colours of each respective paladin were hung a few meters away from the wreath. Even the Alteans had their own, with pink for Allura’s and orange for Coran’s.

But the most eye-catching feature of all in the lounge was no doubt the gigantic Christmas tree, which stood proudly in a cosy corner. Although the team couldn’t find a replica of the classic Christmas tree they had on Earth, they improvised and with the help of Coran, managed to import a tree from Olkarion into the castle.  
It was decorated in a variety of interesting and brightly-coloured ornaments, including miniature models of the Voltron lions and the Castle of Lions, sparkling and shining as bright as the sun from head to toe. 

Currently, Lance and Keith were applying a few finishing touches to the already magnificent-looking tree, while Pidge, on the other hand, was stringing up the last of a pack of fairy lights that the group had purchased at the space mall with the help of Rover.

“Yes, that’s right, a little bit more to the left,” Pidge told Rover as the small droid hovered near the top of the ceiling, one end of the fairy lights held carefully above its head. Much to Shiro’s amusement, he noticed that Rover had a pair of faux reindeer antlers attached to the top of its ‘head’. 

Probably an accessory made by Pidge, he thought, smiling to her as he walked over to where Lance and Keith were standing. They had an opened cardboard box of ornaments lying on the floor at their feet, and it seemed that the duo was fighting over which last ornament to place on the tree for a finishing touch.

“Are you serious, Mullet?” demanded Lance, a scandalised expression on his face as he pointed to the ornament the red paladin had in his hand--a ruby red bauble. “No no no no no, no you don’t! That’ll look outrageously bizarre on the tree, and you know it!”

The blue paladin reached out to place his ornament of choice onto the tree instead, which was the same bauble except in a rich sapphire blue, but Keith pushed his hand away, shaking his head.

“Then what about yours? It doesn’t look exactly great, either. You have bad taste, Lance.” he told the other bluntly.

“Excuse me, Keith! I’ll have you know that I have an amazing sense of taste, okay?”

Shiro couldn’t resist breaking out into a smile at the duo’s childish behaviour.

Kids these days, he thought, chuckling amusedly, turning around and bringing his attention away from Keith and Lance when he heard Coran step up behind him.

“Hello Shiro!” he seemed extremely cheerful, greeting Shiro with a wide smile. “I have good news. Everyone’s agreed to come. Romelle should be arriving first, I’d say in about a varga.”

“Excellent, Coran,” he replied. 

The door opened yet again, and in waltzed Hunk in all his glory. In his hands were a huge tray of delicious looking cookies and wearing a ‘tis the season to be cooking’ apron. 

“Hey guys, I’ve--” Hunk started but before he could even finish his sentence, everyone rushed forward excitedly, smelling the delicious aroma in the air.

Going closer, the other paladins realised that Hunk, being inspired by the ornaments on the olkarion tree, had baked cookies in the shapes of not only the lions and the castle, but also of each of their bayards and even one in the shape of Coran’s bright orange moustache and Allura’s crown.

Pidge swiftly snatched one from the tray, taking a bite.  
“Woah! This is quiznaking scrumptious, Hunk!” they exclaimed, popping the whole thing into their mouth at once.

Just then, Allura too entered the room, the mice scurrying in after her. In her hands were what looked to be a bunch of thick fabrics.

“Greetings, paladins!” the princess said. “I’ve researched on earth Christmas traditions, and it seems you humans have a sort of clothing you wear on the day?”

“Oh, you mean sweaters?” asked Lance, still bickering with Keith about the choice of ornament. “Yeah, I love those. Only it’s too bad we don’t have ‘em.”

“Well, the mice and I have a little handmade gift for each of you,” Allura continued, waving the paladins over. Once they were all gathered around her, she gave them out. Shiro got his first.

“Wow, this is amazing, Princess!” the black paladin thanked Allura with a smile, unfolding his own. It was very comfortable-looking, made of soft fabric and in black, with the words ‘Space Dad’ stitched neatly onto it in white lettering. “Where did you get these?”

“I’m glad you like it,” Allura replied before breaking into explanation, “I used to enjoy knitting as a hobby, but got busy in the fight against the Galra, so I stopped for some time. However, recently, I’ve decided to pick it back up again. So I made you all these sweaters as a small gift for the festivities, and the mice helped too!”

“Woah, thanks, Allura!” Lance unfurled his to find the words ‘sharpshooter’ staring back at him. He turned to leave, “I’ll be putting this on. Hasta la vista!”

Eventually, everyone decided to do the same and momentarily parted their separate ways.

_________________________________________________________________

Everything was ready and the decorations were placed lavishly all over the castle.

As everyone was chilling in the control room, a giant screen suddenly popped up, showing an Altean pod. The screen zoomed into the pod and another screen popped up, revealing familiar light blonde locks and lilac eyes. It was Romelle.

“Hi! I’ll be reaching in a few doboshes, you guys!” she declared, seeming to be in a good mood.

“That’s great! We’ll see you soon.” Allura replied, and the screen disappeared.

True enough, after a while of waiting, Romelle arrived in the flight pod bay and everyone quickly went to greet her.

“Hello, Romelle! Nice to see you,” Coran said with a welcome smile.  
“It’s great to be here too,” the other altean replied warmly, then paused when she noticed their sweaters. “Oh, and um, nice clothes!”

Not long after, the rest of the guests started showing up too. First, it was Krolia, then Matt and Sam, and the blades with Kolivan. Everyone arrived within the next few vargas.

“Alright everyone,” Shiro announced loudly, wearing an excited expression, “Welcome to the first-ever…”

“Christmas Celebration in space!” the other paladins chimed in unison.  
“What shall we be doing first?” Krolia asked, petting Kosmo.

“Games first, of course!” shouted Lance, swirling with energy. “It’s pass the parcel!”

Of course, no one besides the paladins knew what pass the parcel was, but thankfully they were able to find an old package laying around in the basement with a little bit of digging around with Coran, and put in some random gifts inside. As for the music, they were going to use the castle’s built-in speakers.  
“Once Coran starts the music, everyone passes the parcel around the circle to the person on their left as long as the music continues. When it stops, the person holding the parcel undoes one layer or wrapping and inside will be a surprise gift!” Pidge quickly waved everyone to form a circle as they explained the rules, “How about...Keith starts?”

“Oh, okay. Sure,” the blade of marmora member shrugged as the green paladin handed him the parcel. 

“On the count of three,” prompted Coran with short notice before beginning to count down. He was not going to be playing since he was the one who had dug out all the gifts, but instead would be acting as the judge. “Three, two...one, go!”

Immediately, some sort of exotic funky Altean tune began to play, and Keith quickly passed the package to Lance, who passed it to Hunk and then Pidge, and then Shiro. Shiro passed it to Matt, who passed it to his father. The music stopped there.

“Alright, Sam, let’s see what you have there, then!” Coran remarked and the sandy-haired man began unwrapping the first layer. Everyone inched slightly closer in anticipation of what he was going to receive. Soon, the edge of a black cube roughly the size of the average person’s palm appeared. With a smile, Sam took it out of the parcel.

“An Olkari cube! Awesome,” Hunk said. “Let round 2 begin!”  
Sam put the cube in his lap, and once again the groovy music started.

The parcel made its rounds, from Romelle to Allura, and from Krolia to Keith once again. When the parcel landed in Lance’s hands and the music came to a stop, he whooped in joy.

“Alright,” the blue paladin grinned and began to open the second layer of the parcel. “Let’s see what this baby has for me!”  
Shortly after, (to Lance’s annoyance and to the amusement of everyone) the package revealed a bottle of nunvil. Coran chuckled.

“Ah, the classic,” he remarked and Lance groaned, clearly remembering what happened the first time he tasted the exotic altean drink. “Round 3 begins...now!”

At the end of the game, Romelle got a pot of extremely sticky glue, Keith got the altean equivalent of a swiss army knife to add to his collection, and Kolivan got an extremely odd-looking altean hat. It was a bright neon orange, and everyone burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter when the stoic galran put it on reluctantly to everyone’s pleading requests. Pidge even managed to snap a picture.

Then there were the challenges. First was the gingerbread decorating challenge, where everyone partnered up in twos and as the name clearly implied, each got a gingerbread house to decorate. Pidge partnered up with Shiro, Lance with Keith, Krolia with Kolivan, and so on and so forth, with Hunk doing it by himself. Despite the efforts of everyone, the results were inevitable and very obvious, as Hunk still won in a huge way.

Next came the create-an-ornament challenge, where they each got a small portion of altean clay to knead into the desired shape and then bake in the oven to paint and decorate later. Lance attempted to do a shark ornament, but unfortunately ended up making a lumpy, unidentifiable object which could only be described as resembling a roughly kneaded oval-shaped thing with two small sticks of clay sticking out at the ends. Shiro hadn’t much luck either. Initially, he had made his ornament to be a decent shape, but later messed up his hard work when it was time to paint it, creating a rainbow mess. In the end, Allura emerged the winner, with her intricately-crafted ornament the mice. Besides the fact that it was made of clay, it could have easily been declared a carbon copy of the rodents.

After that was sledging challenge. This would be one of the only challenge taking place outside the castle. The group would be travelling to a nearby planet covered in a substance similar to snow, except purple in colour and glowing slightly. Since they didn’t have sledges like the ones on earth, everyone got wooden planks and winged it. They bundled up in scarves, coats and jackets and headed out into the cold.

Although Kolivan and a few others chose to remain in the castle, watching the others through the screen in the control area, all the paladins, as well as Coran, Romelle and Allura decided to sled.

“WOOOO!” Pidge screamed in exhilaration as they pushed themselves down the hill and slid down, gradually picking up speed. Adrenaline was coursing through their veins.

It was both an amazing and unforgettable experience, what with the cold winds rushing past the group, whistling in everyone’s ears as they slid down the vast hills, as well as the feeling of cool, refreshing air on their faces.

“That,” gasped Lance between heavy breaths after they had all made it to the end of the hills and gathered together, “--was--quiznaking awesome!”

“What can I say?” said Shiro with a smirk, wiping a little bit of snow off his face, “I don’t think a lot of aliens, let alone people, have ever sledded down the hills in some foreign planet galaxies away.”

After doing the last challenge, which was the snow creature carving challenge, which was mostly self-explanatory in its name (Shiro won!), the squad headed back to the castle for a dose of Hunk’s hot, steamy cocoa, which was extremely delicious and a sweet relief from the cold, raging winds of the planet.

The afternoon (at least in space timing!) passed everyone by rather quickly, and before anyone knew it, it was evening. Heading to the lounge, everyone plopped down onto the plush, comfy couch as they launched into a round of Monsters and Mana, with Coran being the gamekeeper once again. After a bunch of altean card games which the paladins could understand neither head nor tail of but still enjoyed immensely, it was dinner time. As always, Hunk served up a giant appetizing feast fit for a king, and everyone gladly tucked in. There was turkey and casseroles and stew, and everything was just so mouthwateringly delectable.

Soon enough, everyone was left full and tired.

“I’m afraid it’s time for us to take our leave,” Kolivan informed Coran. “It has been a wonderful day. I’m glad I came along, and I’m sure the other blades are, too.”

“Yeah, I think it’s time I head back to Altea as well,” Romelle nodded. “It’s getting late.”

“Alright then,” Allura said. She was just beginning to usher them out of the castle when suddenly Pidge suggested something.

“Hold on, Allura. Why don’t we all take a group photo?” they said, Rover hovering next to them. “I’ve added a feature to Rover so he can capture photos. It’ll be a memorable souvenir for today!”

There was a general, enthusiastic mutter of agreement in the control room. 

“Everyone, take your positions!” Allura declared with a wave of her hand. The blades stood to one side, Kolivan donned the silly-looking hat once again, Krolia, Sam, Allura, Coran and Romelle went to the right, and the paladins stood in the middle. Lance plastered on a goofy expression, Hunk did bunny ears on Pidge, and Keith and Shiro hugged Kosmo.

“1...2...3, cheese!” shouted everyone in unison as Rover snapped the picture. It developed and came out like a polaroid, except bigger-sized. Everyone gathered around Pidge, who had grabbed the print, to see how the end result looked.

“I’ll send everyone a digital copy of this!” the green paladin said as the colours gradually developed into the photo.

Everyone, even the blades and Kolivan, had bright smiles on their faces. Some people were laughing, while others rocked playful expressions and poses for the camera. 

“We’ll have to do this next deca-phoeb!” cried Coran in delight. “Today has been perfectly brilliant!”

“Hmm,” mused Allura with a grin. “Perhaps that could be arranged.”

Looking at all the happy, joyful faces on the image, everyone knew:

It was truly a Christmas to remember.


End file.
